Confocal line-scanning laser ophthalmoscopes are known per se. Reference can e.g. be made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,874 by Webb et all. describing such an apparatus. A line scanning laser ophthalmoscope (LSLO) is used for providing images of a scanned portion of an eye, the eye being scanned by a substantially line-shaped light beam. In general, the LSLO uses a light source, such as a laser or a superluminescent light emitting diode for generating a substantially collimated light beam. In order to perform the scanning operation, the LSLO is provided with a plurality of optical components or elements to process/convert the light source, to provide the light source in an appropriate shape to the eye, to process the reflected light received from the eye such that it can be processed by a detector. In general, the LSLO therefore comprises the following optical components:                a first optical component for converting a substantially collimated light beam to a line-shaped light beam;        a beam separating element arranged to receive the line-shaped beam and separating the incoming line-shaped beam and the reflected light;        a scanning element arranged to receive the line-shaped beam and displace the line-shaped beam to enable scanning an area of an object of interest (e.g. an eye retina).        optics for focussing the scanning line-shaped beam to enter the eye, e.g. through the pupil, receiving the light reflected from the eye and focussing the received reflected light on a detector, e.g. a linear CCD array.        
Various optical components such as lenses and focusing minors may be used in between these elements to improve the properties of the system.
In case a conventional LSLO is applied to examine a retina of a cataract patient or a patient having similar media opacities, it has been observed that it may be difficult to generate high quality images. Also, laser speckle degrades the image quality; lasers are commonly used in SLOs and LSLOs to create the collimated beam.
By contrast, the point-scan SLO does not suffer from these problems. Point scan SLOs (SLOs) are known per se. Reference can e.g. be made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,873 by Webb et all. describing such an apparatus. In a point-scan SLO two scanners are used—a fast and comparatively slow scanner. The fast scanner scans an illuminated point along a line on the retina, and de-scans the returning light to a point detector. A conventional Line SLO contains only one scanner (a comparatively slow scanner) and uses a line sensor.